The execution of the Alien and Sedition laws proved as unpopular and as futile as Jefferson had imagined. Callender escaped the Alien law by completing his naturalisation, but was fined and imprisoned for seditious publications. His counsel, Cooper, a lawyer-editor, suffered similar punishment. A chartered vessel carried back to France, now under more tolerant government, a large number of émigrés including Volney, the philosophical writer and former friend of Washington, suspected of being at the head of the conspirators in the United States. The abusive Time-Piece was abandoned, one of the editors fleeing the country and the other being under arrest. Duane was assaulted in his office, his presses destroyed by a mob, and himself haled before Congress for criticising their actions. Lyon, a violent Republican who had come near being expelled from the House for assaulting a fellow-member, was fined and imprisoned for commenting on certain appointments made by the President. A half-dozen or more insignificant country editors were caught in the Federalist drag-net, serving only to make the law more ridiculous.

President Adams never found a dangerous alien friend to send out of the country. The war with France was averted and the Alien Enemies act consequently never enforced. Some new issue arose to attract popular attention. The war fever passed as quickly as it came. Only the extra taxes remained to remind the people that the French-war scare of 1798 had ever occurred. War measures are always popular at the time they are passed. National patriotism is aroused, excitement refuses to listen to conservatism, and judgment is replaced by impulse. Measures necessary to raise the extra revenue are easily voted; but after the excitement has passed, the extra taxes become an extra burden. Those who yesterday clamoured most loudly for national defence and "patriotic" measures will to-morrow seek to evade payment or turn and rend the party which imposed the levies. The war is soon over; the train of taxes which follows seems endless. A political party takes small risk in fathering a war; it faces a great danger in the reaction which follows.

The Federalists had not only authorised by their war measures a large addition to the national debt, but had imposed certain forms of direct taxes. Even more odious than either the stamp tax or the tax on slaves was that on "improvements" in property. In order to arrive at a fair conclusion of the value of dwellings, the number of windows in each was taken as a standard by the assessors. This method was not unknown to the Old World, but proved extremely obnoxious in the New. Resistance in eastern Pennsylvania took the form of the so-called '"Fries Insurrection." It offered another opportunity to the National Government to assert its authority, but rendered President Adams still more unpopular, and increased public hostility toward the Federalists. Although Adams pardoned the leader, John Fries, he did not appease the Republicans, and he angered the Hamiltonians, who would show no clemency toward the opponents of law and order. Like some mastodon of old, the party floundered deeper into the swamp, eventually to succumb, leaving only its bones as a warning to the danger of overconfidence.

CHAPTER XIII

THE FIRST STATE PROTESTS

The autumn of 1798 marked the extreme limits to which the leaders and party intentionally strengthening the Union were allowed to go at present. It was the culmination of Federalist power. The critical turning-point, the momentary pause before the backward swing of the pendulum, was marked by popular disorders. The first heat of party passion, the tendency toward centralisation in ten years of Federalism, and ignorance of the extent to which the party might go, had combined to bring the country to the verge of actual disruption. The black cockades (English) fought with the tricoloured cockades (French) on a public fast-day in the streets of Philadelphia. Republicans, attempting to nail up petitions for the repeal of the Alien and Sedition laws on the doors of Christ Church, were set upon by the Federalists and driven away. The President received anonymous letters threatening to burn Philadelphia. Citizens packed their valuables in readiness for flight. Numerous incipient riots occurred in New York and other cities.

While the people of the French faction were thus expressing their disapproval of the administration measures, their leaders were casting about to find the most potent remedy against such abuse of the national power. Even those who, like Madison, believed in the efficacy of the new Government had not expected to see it turned into an agency for the oppression of the individual. To their minds, a continuance of the present course must mean the complete loss of individual and State liberty, or the overthrow of the Union of States, which had been gained only after great effort. An appeal to the ballot was one remedy; but more than two years must elapse before a change of administration was possible. The States, in forming the Union, had thrown about themselves many safeguards. It was high time to test their efficiency.

In the debates on the Alien and kindred measures, the ratification acts of the different States had been quoted by Republican members to show that the States had granted certain powers to the Union, and that the States alone could judge when those powers had been transcended. The State was the natural agency for the protection of the individual in this hour of danger. To an alarmed resident of Delaware, Jefferson offered an asylum in the State of Virginia, where the "laws of the land, administered by upright judges, would protect you from any exercise of power unauthorized by the Constitution of the United States. The habeas corpus secures every man here, alien or citizen, against everything which is not law, whatever shape it may assume."

Browbeaten, as Jefferson explained later, by a bold and overwhelming majority in Congress, the Republicans resolved to retire from that field, and to take a stand in their State Legislatures. The legislative, rather than the executive or judicial branch of the States, represented the people of the United States dwelling in the various States. The State Legislatures had sent delegates to form the Constitution, and the State Legislatures had called the State conventions which adopted it. In the State Legislatures the true friends of the Union, as the Jeffersonians called themselves, would endeavour to find an agency for protection against the unwarranted attack of the National Government. Four members of Congress at this time actually withdrew, forming a striking precedent for sixty years later. Although sometimes charged with planning a forcible resistance to the central power, the Republicans as a whole contemplated nothing more than concerted action in resolutions to be adopted by the State Legislatures. "I would not do anything at this moment," advised Jefferson, who naturally assumed the leadership, "which should commit us further, but reserve ourselves to shape our future measures, or no measures, by the events which may happen."

Selecting North Carolina as a strong Republican State to take the lead, Jefferson drew up a set of resolutions setting forth the doctrine of protest. However, chancing to meet some Kentucky politicians visiting in Virginia, he gave the paper to them. Their State offered advantages superior to North Carolina for inaugurating the movement. Her history from infancy had been one continued struggle for political rights. "Kentucky," said her governor in his message at the opening of the session of the State Legislature following the passage of the Alien and Sedition acts, "remote from the contaminating influences of European politics, is steady to the principles of pure Republicanism and will ever be the asylum of her persecuted votaries." The customary reply of the House took the shape of nine lengthy resolutions, rewritten from the set drawn up by Jefferson. They were adopted by both Houses of the State Legislature, signed by the governor, and sent as an appeal to the "co-states in the federal Union." Assuming that the States and the Union had made a compact whereby the latter had been given certain limited powers for definite purposes, the remaining powers being reserved to the States, the resolutions declared that whenever the General Government assumed undelegated powers, its acts were unauthoritative, void, and of no force; and that, as in all cases of compact having no common judge, each party had a right to judge of infractions and redress. This hypothesis being assumed, the remainder of the resolutions supports it with arguments, using generally the ones employed by the opposition speakers in Congress to prove that the Alien and Sedition laws were unconstitutional.